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A2 Media EvaluationMaxine Carty

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In what ways does your media product, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?A key convention of a music video is to feature the artist to establish who he or she is.In our video our actress is personifying Paloma Faith and once the singer is represented which is most likely through close ups, this makes sure we know who the artist is and the target audience is aware of who she is. This convention of an artist appearing in their own video is used in many videos for promotion.Our product upholds the conventions of a music video by letting the artist be sold throughout the video with her singing and acting. We decided to use our artist in the story to get more coverage of her and to give the song a personal feel that the audience may be able to relate to.

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In what ways does your media product, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (cont.)The video edits are slow paced to reflect the style and pace of the song. This is another convention upheld because slow edits are associated with emotional songs. Also the lyrics in the song uphold visual references to the music video and reveals we have followed the codes and conventions of a normal music video. By following this and using the lyrics as a story and we symbolise a dying romance, i.e ‘ I asked you for a letter so you emailed, have we failed’ there is a letter and key for the boyfriend and a suitcase in the hallway explains her intention to leave, showing that they have ‘failed’.

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In what ways does your media product, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (cont.)Our 1950s theme led to researching the codes and conventions of a women living at this time. We found out that women were only seen as housewives, which led to us finding Anne Taintor images which takes fun at the roles of women in the 1950s. This is where we got our idea for our album cover by recreating Anne Taintor images with a modern twist. For example, there is an image where the woman was sleeping and wakes up thinking ‘I dreamt cod was a fish’ and in the original it was ‘I dreamt my whole house was clean’. We decided as a group to add humour to our work, taking initiative from Ms Taintor because there is a huge contrast between women of today and women of the 50s. Also Paloma Faith brings a fun element in her videos through her personality, style and performance.

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In what ways does your media product, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (cont.)These are the four main narrative theorists : Vladimir Propp , Roland, Barthes, Tzvetan Todorov and Claude Lévi-StraussNarrative theory is where a story is shown throughout a piece of media with a beginning and end. We showed this is by through a story of a young couple who are slowly growing apart, we chose this as a reoccurring lyric in the song is ‘romance is dead’ and within the rest of the song we hear of the mans’ failed attempts in showing her affection .As a result of this we show her contemplating with a letter showing that she was attempting leaving. The ending to the song is where we finally see what was driving a wedge between them and it was because she is pregnant.

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In what ways does your media product, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (cont.)Propp’s theory, he states that throughout the narrative there are 8 distinctive characters:--The Hero-The Villain -The Princess-Her Father-The Donor-The Dispatcher-The False Hero-The HelperWhen the audience establishes to which character fulfils which role, they are likely to predict what the character will do next. In our video we put these characters as :-The Hero:- Vintage/Fantasy Male-The Villain:- Modern/Real Male-The Princess:- Female Protagonist-Her Father:- Modern/ Real Male-The Donor:- Female Protagonist-The Dispatcher:- Modern/Real Male-The False Hero:- Vintage/Fantasy Male-The Helper:- Female ProtagonistAs we only have two characters there is a mix of Propp’s characters and from these roles we are able to uphold Propp’s theory.

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In what ways does your media product, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (cont.)In Todrov’s take on the narrative theory he believes that there is specific order in a story of:Equilibrium Disequilibrium EquilibriumThis pattern could be reversed and be seen as Disequilibrium Equilibrium DisequilibriumWe have upheld Todrov’s theory in our storyline using the Disequilibrium order. The beginning starts with disequilibrium with the couple ignoring each other, then its equilibrium where she has her fantasies and everything seems to be ok . Finally were at disequilibrium again where they are arguing and we find out she is pregnant which is a huge shock her the man.

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In what ways does your media product, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (cont.)Levi- Strauss’ theory is on binary opposites which we used in both our music video and ancillary texts. For example good vs bad, young vs old and old vs new.Our video uses the binary opposites of old vs new. There is1950s women vs modern women and1950s relationship vs a modern relationship. These emphasise the conflicts between the two eras and we have also used good vs bad; the 50s scenes being good as opposed to the modern scenes which are complete opposite. Therefore we upheld Levi- Strauss’ theory of Binary opposites to an extent.

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How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?The effectiveness of our ancillary texts and main product is due to the representation of gender roles, especially women in the 50s compared to now. As a group we feel that our ancillary text is ideal for what we are trying to portray. The album cover of the modern day shots next to the vintage equivalent shows a contrast in how roles have changed in modern day society. This relates back to the theme of the video itself making the imagery of the album effective.The poster is also showing this as a member of our group is an Elvis fan and is very familiar to 1950 styles/décor. We also took the concept of 1950s from Paloma Faith’s style which led to us finding Anne Taintor ;and her quotes such as ‘She had made yet another wise shopping decision’ and ‘I dreamed my whole house was clean’.

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How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?We used Anne Taintor’s images and recreated them with the artist in both modern and 1950s clothing, linking to the video and the expressed on the potential album cover and advertisement.

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How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?Shows 50s dream state through a brighter colour and glowing.Modern women has a dulled effect as this is the life she does not want and the shadowed looks helps emphasise her lack of happiness.The placement of the dull image was intentional as ‘Faith’ is on ths side symbolising her hopes in her fantasy.‘Is in both black and red shows difference in the two worlds

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How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?This is our album cover and we chose the title ‘Scepticism is the beginning of Faith’ as she is sceptical about her boyfriend changing and her life now that she is expecting a child.

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What have you learned from your audience feedback?We constructed two questionnaires before and after our final product, at first we had a large target audience of young adults (aged 14-20) as the artist we were considering relates to those both her age and below. Although results collected had a majority of 14-16 year olds.The first questionnaire was to confirm our chosen artist. Questions used were ‘Do you like music videos?’ and ‘What genre music do you prefer?’ this helped establish a suitable genre (Pop/Soul) , target audience (aged 14-16), and know how effective a music video could be. Allowing us to select an artist that appeals to the audience and Paloma Faith was our choice as she is a Pop/Soul artist and she is appealing to our audience.The second was to receive feedback for our music video, It enabled us to make changes to our video after the question ‘Was the lighting effective?’ revealed it was poor at times, so we brightened up clips without spoiling them. We also learned that out main theme was effective and portrayed well in both stages of ‘reality’ and ‘dream’.We also posted the video on Facebook and YouTube to get a wider range of reviews. We got a lot of positive feedback but it was not as helpful as the questionnaires as the comments were qualitative making it harder for us to quantify into results. Also some comments were vague like ‘I like it’, ‘This is good’ or ‘Great job’ which does not tell us what worked and what did not work so we, used more feedback from questionnaires.

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What have you learned from your audience feedback? (cont.)This is a selection of results we gathered that influenced our decisions when constructing our music video.

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How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?Web 2.0 is the emergence of new media technologies and different types of applications used to transfer information via digital techniques, computerized systems or data networks. These include internet-based concepts like websites, blogs, and digital mediums (CD-ROMS and DVDs). We also used VLOGs to help document the process of our filming and knowledge of media technologies. These are links to the few we used:http://maxinecartya2media.blogspot.com/2011/03/target-audience.html- Blog and VLOGwww.youtube.com/ELMMediastudies - YouTube accountWe used you tube to research music videos of both students and professional artists to gain and understanding for the genres, forms and conventions of music videos. This gave us an insight into how we could make our music video differ from the others effectively. Also after we completed our music video we used YouTube to promote it and obtain feedback from our target audience on what they thought about it and if there should be any improvements. Finally, we got feedback from an audience who were not familiar with us and they were able to give us an unbiased review on our video.

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How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? (cont.)Using the internet was helpful when researching, as it helped us to find our artist, know what she’s like, look into the genre, and any other relevant information. Without the internet we wouldn’t have found out Paloma Faith is influenced by Etta James, Billie Holiday and her style matches Anne Taintor’s artwork. When designing our ancillary texts It was helpful as it gave us an opportunity to look at her previous CD covers, advertisements and others of the same genre. Also it helped prevent us from mimicking the same Art Deco font Paloma Faith uses, so we had to think outside the box and came across potential options. These are some of the sites we used:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paloma_Faithhttp://www.geffrye-museum.org.uk/ - examples of 1950s decorWe used two different cameras to film and create the ancillary text for our music video. We used a Fujifilm s1730 to take our images used in the album cover and advertisement. We used this camera because its 12 megapixels is better quality than most and produces clear pictures for our creations. The settings on the camera were easy to use and a tripod was used for some shots to have a level photo and not used when it wasn’t suitable i.e. Tilt shots from the ground, and close mid shots.

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How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?We used the Sony DCR-SR35 for filming as it produces good clips and has HDD allowing picture quality to be clear. It comes with 30gb of memory so it was enough to film all our clips without having to delete any to make more room. Last year we had the trouble of our camera’s touch screen menu not working which was worrying as we couldn't playback our clips, and only had to hope we recorded each scene perfectly. That's why this year the camera was fixed and we could playback our clips and upload to the computer trouble free. Battery life on the camera could be better so we had the charger plugged in when possible. It also fitted onto the tripod which allowed a steady shot of clips but some scenes a tripod was not essential.To edit our work we used IMovie on the Apple Macs because we have used this software before and were familiar with it. Also it has a limited range of transitions and effects so we used it once as our video didn’t need a wide range of them. When lip syncing the clip to music it was quite stressful as some parts look out of time and its noticeable but working on the clips longer improved the quality overall.

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How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?We used Photoshop to edit the images onto a CD cover and advertisement for the ancillary task. We found it slightly challenging in the beginning but after practice it became more easier and we started to use different tools and learnt shortcuts to speed up the process. i.e. Using layers made it easier to paste different images on the poster to see if it merged well and remove separately instead of deleting the whole image if it didn’t.We then used PowerPoint for the evaluation because it allowed us to write an essay in a different format using slides, different layouts , colours, designs and animation if we wanted to allowing individuality. Its a modern twist on the traditional format of an essay. To make it even more different we are able to add links along with the info we add to the evaluation.